For Whom the Turnpike Tolls

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The piece’s author, C.
Kenneth Orski, editor and publisher of the transportation newsletter Innovation
NewsBriefs, made a similar prediction five years ago when he called for a “fresh
look” at using tolls to pay for any new highway capacity. Citing the enormous
and growing gap between what U.S. infrastructure needs just to maintain the
status quo and the equally tremendous cost for new and improved roads, Orski
rejects other funding sources as impractical and insufficient. (Clearly a
pragmatist, he barely suggests muni bonds, a stance that now seems doubly prescient
as the auction-rate market goes through the wringer.)

“The conclusion stems neither from an ideological preference
for ‘privatization’ nor from a libertarian impulse to seek a reduced federal
presence in the nation’s transportation program,” he writes. “Rather, it is
grounded in the reality that every last cent that can be raised through the gas
tax will be needed to maintain and modernize our aging highway infrastructure.
Resorting to tolls and private capital to help finance future highway capacity
is the best way to ensure the future growth of the nation’s surface highway network
without imposing an unacceptable tax burden on the American people.”

Orski says a tipping point has been reached on both the
ideological and commercial planes, as both the U.S. Transportation Department
is flogging an Express Lanes
Demonstration Program that encourages charging a toll on new roads or lanes
that have been improved. In words that sent a chill through many
hearts in
California, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters wrote, “Of far greater promise
than traditional gas taxes is direct pricing of road use similar to how people
pay for other utilities.” Hence the interest in taxing interstates to build new ones …

Orski also notes the promise of public-private partnerships
to develop new highways and the allocation of $2.5 billion by California’s
behemoth public employee pension plan for investments in infrastructure. Since
infrastructure has never been seen as a revenue center for government, CalPERS
must see some promise in tolling that eluded most everyone in years past.

Adding to the allure of tolls, at least from the
bureaucratic side, has been an increased willingness to hike rates to beyond
the point of just paying the bills.

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